


foltchaoin and ró-ech

by meios



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 02:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3274088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I would have sent a guard to accompany you!” she says, looking him up and down, reaching up to grab his chin, turning him this way and that, inspecting him for any signs of injury. “Was there any trouble on the road? News? Has something happened? Should I gather my armor, my staff?”</p><p>“The clan is fine,” he responds. “Wycome has welcomed us. We’ve found a home amidst the chaos that your Inquisition’s calmed, our Keeper has sent her warmest regards, a letter that was taken by the woman downstairs in the gold dress—”</p>
            </blockquote>





	foltchaoin and ró-ech

“You named your bloody  _hart_  after me, did you?”  
  
Flidais looks up from her book, feet tucked underneath her. The sun catches dust particles in the air, in its beams, the library warmed by the fire burning from the center of Solas’ old study. And she grins, extricating herself from the wooden chair she is perched on, throwing Dorian’s feet off of her lap, much to his verbal displeasure, before she launches herself into the strange man’s arms.  
  
He looks like her, similar eye size and shape, though, they are a differing shade of green. His skin is a tone darker than hers, his hair pulled back to a low tail trailing down his neck, sides shaved. He smiles and it is her smile, too, and he picks her up with ease, a good bit taller than the Inquisitor, and spins her.  
  
She squeals, face cracking beneath the weight of her grin.  
  
When the man puts her down, she immediately shoves him. “I would have sent a guard to accompany you!” she says, looking him up and down, reaching up to grab his chin, turning him this way and that, inspecting him for any signs of injury. “Was there any trouble on the road? News? Has something happened? Should I gather my armor, my staff?”  
  
The tattoos on his face are similar to a large tree, but unlike Flidais’, the branches do not stretch, but the roots do. The tree is hollowed out, dead, the ink gray, like veins. They curl around his lips. His hands are long, nimble when they gently cover the Inquisitor’s, convince them to return to her sides.  
  
“The clan is fine,” he responds. “Wycome has welcomed us. We’ve found a home amidst the chaos that your Inquisition’s calmed, our Keeper has sent her warmest regards, a letter that was taken by the woman downstairs in the gold dress—”  
  
“Josephine.”  
  
“I just heard so many  _fascinating_  tales about my little sister that I simply  _had_  to come to see which ones were true,” the man smirks, crooked and warmhearted, like she.  
  
She shoves him again. “ _Fergus_!”  
  
Fergus. Dorian stands, having witnessed this spat, and clears his throat. Flidais turns, blinking as if she had forgotten that he had been there, to which he raises an eyebrow, because how could anyone possibly forget about him? Fergus looks down to his sister and then back up to Dorian.  
  
“ _Da’fen_ , this is Dorian Pavus,” she says, the nickname rolling off of her tongue with a rather mischievous air. Her brother squints at her, murmurs something in their mother language; he meets Dorian’s eyes, and for a moment, the older elf is visibly suspicious, scrutinizing him,  _seeing_  him.  
  
Dorian offers a hand, regardless, taking initiative, watching as every expression that Fergus makes appear sharper than the ones Flidais makes. The mistrust, the momentary disbelief, the slight amusement at the mustache: it is like a mirror, but skewed.  
  
He is angles that Flidais does not seem to have, or, perhaps, she  _does_ , but they are different on her. In the same way that the sun has similar qualities to the moon, but are also completely different. And Dorian’s mouth is dry, and then he swallows, and it is dryer.  
  
Fergus’ touch is a lightning strike.  
  
His handshake is strong, squeezing Dorian’s fingers with that of a predator, of a hunter; and his frown is a smile now, as small as it is. “Fergus Lavellan,” he states, his accent Marcher, his posture proud. He is the same height as Dorian.  
  
He glances at the Inquisitor and he must say that she is awful at hiding her laughter when it comes to him. He wonders if this was how he was like when she and Cullen had been dancing around one another.  
  
“A pleasure.”  
  
“I’m sure,” Flidais coughs. Dorian eyes her, sending daggers. Ignoring him, she looks up to her brother, grinning. “I’ll gather the others. Dorian can take you to the gardens.”  
  
And she is gone, and he  _hates_  when she does that.  
  
“I hate when she does that,” sighs Fergus.  
  
Dorian meets his gaze, laughing. “You and I are going to get along just fine.”  
  
*  
  
Fergus remains for a few months.  
  
Flidais insists, mostly, though he would later tell Dorian that he had planned on staying for this long anyway. He worries, and she knows that he worries, and she is used to it. Added with Cullen and Varric and Josephine and everyone in between constantly attempting to keep her alive, safe, unscathed throughout the bouts of political and physical warfare, Flidais generally rejects any worry from her brother, instead flipping it to him.  
  
He is surprised to find that Dorian understands a handful of Elven, even more so when he expresses a desire to learn. By the campfires they make when traipsing through the deserts and forests that Flidais’ mark often takes them to, Fergus slips into it to test the Tevinter, bringing Flidais in more times than not.  
  
He delights in Cullen’s company, and Dorian has caught the soft expression that overtakes his face when he catches them in a tender moment, a chance to catch their breaths.  _She flourishes here_ , he says one night after the fire has died, the other having fallen asleep a long while ago. Dorian agrees. Fergus smiles and Dorian cannot move for a heartbeat, stricken.  
  
“She’s brighter with you here,” he says.  
  
“How d’you think?” asks the elf.  
  
“Over a week’s ride from being anywhere near the people that raised her, after constantly learning that things she knew were either lies or misinterpreted while also ruling over a small kingdom that worries even the  _Qunari_ ,  _and_  still capable of doing stupid things like attempting to climb a mountain that we could just as easily walk around?” Dorian laughs some, fingers messing with the curls of his moustache, fidgeting.  
  
Fergus concedes, “I see your point.”  
  
*  
  
He talks about his sister and avoids talking about himself.  
  
He seems to long for the silence that sparring with Blackwall brings him, and sometimes, when Dorian watches, he will look up and be freer than ever. As if the chains that are rusted around his wrists have come apart, shattered.  
  
And he understands, to an extent, how it feels to be shackled, living under the weight of something invisible, disheartening, torturous. The sight makes his hands itch, his desire for the numbing sensation of a stiff drink rise, but he stays. He stays and he watches and he remembers.  
  
Dorian remembers the temple in the Arbor Wilds, remembers reading about the ancient elves, how they had been chained but not really. He remembers  _Abelas_ —sorrow. He remembers  _Solas_ —pride. He sees them in the rifts with the demons sometimes, for only a blink, a half of a second, hallucinations of what is and what has been and what will never be.  
  
“Who is your  _vallaslin_  for?” he asks, or rather, blurts one evening. They walk the pathway to Solas’ old dwellings from Cullen’s office, the commander in good spirits after having won most of their chess games for the week.  
  
Fergus does not reply until they are inside.  
  
He opens his mouth to change the subject, but Fergus, with his strong arm, strong voice, stops him from stepping, speaking, breathing. The frescos encircling the room, the fire in the center, show a perception of the elf that he has never seen before.  
  
He is darkness and ferociousness and unkempt wildlife and Fergus’ eyes trace over the figures that Solas had painted, his fingers painting them with the air. It is different, Dorian supposes, at night, as opposed to the daytime.  
  
“ _Falon’Din_ , Friend to the Dead,” he finally says.  
  
“‘ _Lethanavir_ , master-scryer, be our guide, through shapeless worlds and airless skies,’” quotes the human, soft, but upon Fergus’ questioning glance, he explains: “In the Arbor Wilds, at the temple, there were… songs, inscriptions, to the elven gods.”  
  
Fergus nods.  
  
“Why him?”  
  
“There were parallels,” he replies, staring up at the murals still, addressing the wind, “with  _da’vhenan_  and myself and  _Falon’Din_  and his brother,  _Dirthamen_. Though she’s found harmony with  _Mythal_ , she’ll say the same. Our first true separation was when I disappeared for a number of days, leaving her alone, afraid, with the clan.  
  
“I was hunting. I thought I’d found something—it’s not important. I was stupid. I went to a place where I shouldn’t have. I nearly died. I went mad for a while.”  
  
Fergus turns to look at him. Dorian’s breath catches in his chest, and they are not close and they have only known each other for a month and a half, and Fergus’ breath does not touch his, his hands do not wander Dorian’s arms, face, hair. They remain at his sides, slipping into the pockets of his trousers for lack of anything to hold on to. Dorian, for all of his charisma and all of his masks, does not really know what to do.  
  
The elf says, “She found me in the Fade and brought me back. I’m not a mage. She is. I was tempted. She knew better. She worries, I worry, and I trust her.”  
  
He straightens, then, and smiles, not sadly, not happily, but just a quirk of the lips. And that is something that is Fergus’, not Flidais’, not shared between them.  
  
They hesitate before moving towards the stairs, Fergus resting a hand on his elbow, stopping at the bottom. Dorian hums in question. “And I trust you.”  
  
*  
  
He leaves in the early morning.  
  
The days are longer now, the birds having returned and nesting in the garden’s trees, in the bushes. The hart named Fergus eats with the rest of the horses and the elf named Fergus walks toward the main gate with his horse. The skies are pink and orange and blue; the wind is nearly nonexistent, though the chill that is always permeable in the air is sharp.  
  
Dorian stands beside Flidais as she bids her brother goodbye, a hand on his cheek, glowing for a breath. They embrace, the little mage squeezing her eyes shut, her face in his neck. His hand goes to the top of her head; they sway, unwilling to let go. But they do, and Dorian is silently grateful that the rest of Skyhold is asleep, lest they see their Inquisitor cry.  
  
They whisper to each other. He kisses her forehead.  
  
He thanks the advisers individually. He is proper in spite of the situation; he is proper despite the fact that his hands tremble slightly, his body stiff.  
  
“You don’t have to leave,” Dorian murmurs. Fergus rests a hand on his elbow, light, barely there, almost little enough to register in Dorian’s mind.  
  
“I’ll come back.”  
  
He rolls his eyes. “They  _always_  say that.”  
  
“You must tell me who ‘they’ are some time,” Fergus chuckles, and he presses his mouth to Dorian’s.  
  
And it is long, chaste, and Dorian grips the elf’s hips, hugs him around the middle when they break, and Flidais is not laughing now, not at his blush, at the little smile that pulls at him, at the way that he brushes his nose over Fergus’ neck.  
  
*  
  
Flidais looks at him when he is gone and the fortress awakens.  
  
“We’re going to talk,” she says.  
  
Dorian smirks. “Over drinks, perhaps?”  
  
“You know me too well.”  
  
*  
  
He returns in the snow and kisses like fire.

**Author's Note:**

> HI OKAY so i'm gonna be a huge nerd and talk to you about celtic stuff, because flidais and fergus are actually beings from the religion. i worship flidais, actually.
> 
> basically, think of artemis, but like, more badass.
> 
> she was married to this dude who she didn't like but she loved fergus this other dude who was a king and they fought and fergus won and that's cool and all
> 
> flidais had magic cattle and she was really fkn cool and i love her.
> 
> but now okay, fergus gets exiled and he's killed by some dude who was jealous. dude tricks his blind brother into throwing a spear into the river him and medbe are swimming in and the spear goes into fergus' chest. it's sad.
> 
> okay so in this universe i've got headcanons and reincarnation is super important to it and elven religion reminds me of some religions that're super important to me.
> 
> foltchaoin means "the soft-haired"  
> ró-ech means "great horse"
> 
> da'vhenan means "little heart"  
> da'fen means "little wolf"
> 
> if anything was missed/you have questions i got u


End file.
